Den of the Cyphered Wolf

Saturday, April 7, 2018

Let's Talk About Digital Labor

So two things happened at relatively the same time making it hard to talk about one without the other but also the importance of each also overshadows the other to the point it's nearly impossible to talk about both at the same time.

YouTube Headquarters just got shot up by a disgruntled vlogger. And before I continue I want to apologize to them. I want to start a broader discussion about digital media, labor and yes monetization, but the moment somebody chooses to try to have that discussion with violence it ceases being a discussion and turns into a threat whether I want it to or not. And believe me I don't want it to be. That's not how society is supposed to work. And I don't just mean that regarding this issue. I don't care if somebody has a perfunctory line in their "manifesto" I agree with. Murder is murder and attempted murder is attempted murder.

That being said something else happened last week that makes it more difficult for me to wait until the dust settles to have this discussion.

Former Channel Awesome Producer released a Google Doc of long-standing complaints they had against the company. While Channel Awesome didn't start on YouTube they were and a lot of their producers still are pioneers of the current web video landscape. I want acknowledge that that Gooogle doc was also mostly written by disgruntled ex-employees of the company, but I'm also inclined to believe them.

Why?

Because there are plenty of other online media companies that have been under fire for similar scandals to the point where I have to wonder, is this just want it means to work in online media. If it is that's a problem we need to fix because it means the internet and the economics behind it are fundamentally broken. Digital media as it exists right now is inherently exploitative. And considering it's ubiquity that's a big damn deal.

New Yorker article that came close to trying to make sense of YouTube producer issues in the context of the shooting but I felt missed mark. Later I found an Ars Technica article that describes those issues better but I also understand how it could be seen as glorifying the shooter.

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